I'm not the first commentator to note the decline of civil discourse in this country, but so far as I know I'm the first to say that this has potentially serious consequences for the military. I mean the way people are encouraged to think nowadays that all views are of equal value. If you think it, it's worth just as much as what anybody else thinks. One way of putting this phenomenon is the creep of the political into spheres where it doesn't belong. If somebody says something you don't agree with, don't respond to the argument, hit back with angry snarls and, if possible, personal attacks. Perhaps people will think this is the same as refutation.

Recently a freshman congresswoman seemed to suggest that Rep. John Murtha, who had stated that it was time to bring the troops home from Iraq, was a coward -- as if the only reason one might suggest that no more lives should be lost was cowardice. On what basis does someone conclude that this is the motivation? Apparently none, but I bet it felt really good to lash out. After all, in your own mind, you're always right.

It's become so general, this making loud public assertions without thinking through the logic, that I'm ready to call it the "sickness of the century," echoing the French poet and playwright Musset. In such a world, no one has to give any basis for what he or she claims; the mere fact of claiming it is an end in itself. Everybody has a right to express an opinion, and all have the same value.

This is exactly the opposite of what I teach as a professor, and what I take to be the basis for the real respect that has to be at the basis of the follower-leader relationship so central to the military. Over and over in my classes I have to tell the students: "Justify that assertion." You can't say that Othello is fill-in-the-blank just because you feel like saying it. All opinions are not equal; some have more evidence to back them up. The point is to show future officers in the Navy and Marine Corps that, even in a world of grays, such as strategy decisions in the military operate in (it's never l00% clear what the right course of action is), there are ways of arriving at more well founded courses of action, points of view.

Recently I got a taste of how this conviction that "it's all opinion" works out in practice. A student at the Naval Academy wrote me an e-mail about one of these columns. He knew he was addressing me, personally, because he chose to use my work email. The piece was about ROTC versus the service academies. I opened the e-mail and found this: "You have completely missed the point about the academies."

Aside from the absolute lack of respectful opening ("sir" works), how does someone this young get off telling off a 51-year-old full professor he's "missed the point"? Missing the point is a pretty grave fault in the guy who teaches argument. Sure, I could have been having an off day. But it isn't likely. In fact, what it turned out to mean was, this midshipman hadn't understood the point of my piece. After his opening followed a disordered string of unrelated assertions -- which would have failed my class -- whose bottom line was, the midshipman (a freshman, or "plebe," as they are called) simply refused to contemplate the possibility that ROTC officers could be the equal of service academy products. He, after all, was at a service academy, and was convinced he was better. QED. This plebe had boundless confidence in his own ability, and was showing through both the form and content of his communication with me that he lacked competence in providing evidence to back up his argument. That's a killer combination, and I told him this in no uncertain terms.

Several steps later (a visit from his company officer, an even more unbelievable e-mail from his buddy that resulted in punishment for the buddy) I found in my box a communication I had expected to be an apology for having informed the pro he couldn't hit the ball (think of how an 0-6 would have responded to this e-mail). The hardest he was willing to be on himself was to say he'd got the "format" wrong. It then went on to say affably, as if one old buddy to another, that he was sure we were both busy, but if I "had anything to add" his e-mail was as follows. It was clear, he added, we simply did not see eye-to-eye on the subject of this article.

My jaw dropped. This wasn't about a difference of opinion. It was about his not seeing how irrelevant his response was to my argument, yet being convinced he had the right to sound off anyway. He didn't like what I was suggesting, and it was clearly his right, at least in his own mind, to say that in any way he could manage. If all was "opinion," why not? (What does he think the government pays me for, I wondered?)

I had fielded essentially the same, albeit more polite, e-mail the week before from a West Point exchange student. This young man had also asserted passionately that academy graduates just had to be better. (Actually he was arguing only for USMA; USNA graduates, he conceded, probably weren't better.) When I tried to show him how irrelevant his "evidence" (his own conviction) was to the argument I was offering, he informed me we'd "just have to agree to disagree." All views are opinions, and all opinions are equal. There's no such thing as backing them up.

The conviction, apparently general, that everything is merely "opinion" is not good for the military. On what basis can a subordinate respect the decision of a superior if this is so? All that's left is merely power: this person has more power, so his or her view holds. This leads to people following orders with no enthusiasm, and with merely waiting until the day when they themselves are in the position of power to push others around as they themselves were pushed.

Perhaps it's politics that's led us to this situation. Perhaps it's the Internet, where people are encouraged to explode in blogs and discussion strings with their views. But for the military it's positively dangerous. There's not always time or place for a superior to lay out his or her reasoning, but when appropriate, he or she should always be able to do so. And it needs to be convincing. In a world where people believe there is no reasoning, but only "opinions," the basis of authority crumbles.